O's game blog: Game 2 of the series at Washington

For the Orioles, the games march on and so does the search for wins. After last night's 4-2 loss at Nationals Park, the clubs play the middle game of a three-game series at Washington today. It's the second of a 10-game road trip for the Orioles.

The Birds have been held to three runs and six hits in back-to-back losses by 10-1 to Tampa Bay and last night. The Orioles were on their way to a fifth shutout loss until Freddy Galvis hit a two-run homer with two outs in the top of the ninth.

Baltimore is now a season-worst 10 games under the .500 mark at 17-27. They have dropped four games in a row and have lost eight of nine and 11 of 13 games since John Means pitched a no-hitter at Seattle.

The Orioles continue to lead the all-time series 45-36 over Washington and they are 22-19 all-time at Nats Park.

Left-hander Bruce Zimmermann (2-3, 4.79 ERA) will make his eighth appearance and seventh start for the Orioles. On Sunday he pitched in relief versus the Yankees and had a great outing. He gave up two hits and one run over 5 2/3 innings with one walk and six strikeouts on 84 pitches. Zimmermann has two quality starts and the Orioles are 1-5 in his previous starts in 2021.

Lefty batters have hit .375 against him with a .985 OPS, and right-handers have hit .269/.836.

He has used his fastball 43 percent of the time at an average velocity of 91.6 mph. Zimmermann mixes in his changeup 27 percent of the time with 16-percent curveball usage and his slider 14 percent.

Lefty Jon Lester gets the start for the Nationals. He is 0-2 with a 3.80 ERA in four starts. Over 21 1/3 innings he has allowed 23 hits with seven walks and 14 strikeouts. Lester has 1.406 WHIP, allowing 9.7 hits per nine innings and 1.3 homers, with a walk rate of 3.0 and strikeout rate of 5.9 per nine.

He has not faced the Orioles since July 5, 2014 with Boston, but previously has made 27 starts against the Orioles, going 15-4 with a 2.78 ERA.

Juan Soto has produced multi-hit efforts in three of his last four games, going 7-for-17 (.412) with a double, homer, two RBIs, two walks and one run scored over this stretch. Soto has reached base safely in 11 straight games dating to May 11 and is hitting .326/.442/.419 during this streak.

The O's Trey Mancini leads the majors with 39 RBIs, two more than Boston's J.D. Martinez and Rafael Devers and Houston's Yuli Gurriel. He is working on a season-high eight-game hitting streak. He has two career double-digit hitting streaks (11 and 17). Mancini is batting .464/.559/1.000 (13-for-28) with six doubles, three home runs, seven runs scored, 10 RBIs and six walks in this stretch. In 18 games in May, Mancini has recorded a major league-best 22 RBIs. It is the most RBIs in the month of May by an Oriole since Manny Machado collected 23 in 2018.